"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Will The Far Right Eat Its Own Children? Bye-Bye Mary Bono-Mack

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Meet the Bono-Macks: Oops... wrong GOP image this season

I hope you watched the video of Republican legislative candidate Catherine Crabill at a Virginia teabagger party a few days ago. Her sick, violent and sociopathic vision of America is all that's left of the Republican Party base. Hers is now the dominant wing of a once mainstream and respectable Republican Party. All over America very conservative Republicans in regions dominated by neo-fascist mindsets inculcated by Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, etc are being forced to take positions so far from mainstream thought that they are being looked at as dangerous or demented by normal Americans. Even extreme right-wing Republicans like John Cornyn (R-TX) and Gresham Barrett (R-SC) are being mercilessly booed at teabagger events they somehow think their partisan obstructionism entitles them to bask in if not lead. They should probably count themselves fortunate to have not been lynched or shot so far. The vice chair of the Davidson County Republican Party refused to shake hands with right-wing Congressman Zack Wamp, his party's candidate for governor, not because Wamp is a dangerous extremist but because he isn't far enough to the right! (And if you think I'm exaggerating, do yourself a favor and read Dave Neiwert's fantastic new book, The Eliminationists, which could easily have been dedicated to Ms. Crabill and her ilk in the center of the GOP.)

Yesterday mainstream conservative Mary Bono Mack, who has already been threatened by right-wingers for voting in line with her moderate constituents on a few occasions (much to the chagrin of the extremists), wound up with 100 demented teabaggers marching up and down in front of her Palm Springs office protesting and vowing to defeat her in 2010.

About 100 protesters from the Tea Party Patriots are outside Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack's office in Palm Springs waving signs and flags, and presenting her with pink slips that say "You're fired."

Christina Michas, regional coordinator for the group, said the protests are taking place all over the country about health care reform and cap and trade.

"It's going to continue on until the election, or at least until the people realize they work for us," she said.

Bono-Mack, who is already being outraised by the popular mayor of Palm Springs, Democrat Steve Pougnet, represents one of the California districts that Obama won last year. The 45th is a polarized district that has been devastated by the mortgage crisis and by unemployment (14% in Riverside County). There are enough ignorant, self-entitled extremists to control the local Republican Party but moderates and independents have been massively driven away from the GOP and the hateful lunatic rhetoric of Limbaugh, Beck, Coulter, O'Reilly, et al-- which all the angry, frustrated, miserable long-distance commuters are subjected to daily.

Yesterday the Desert Sun asked Bono-Mack and Pougnet if they think another stimulus bill is needed to guarantee a recovery for the hard-pressed Coachella Valley and the surrounding area. Bono-Mack, being attacked from the right as well as by normal voters, refuses to answer any questions from the press about policy matters. Pougnet has the debate all to himself and he told the biggest paper in the district that "When President Obama took office he was dealt a hand of trillion-dollar debt, rising unemployment and a crippled economy. And with an impending tsunami of economic deterioration, the administration took the extraordinary step of creating the stimulus plan to save and create jobs to get American working again." But Pougnet, a social progressive and a fiscal conservative-- possibly a potential Blue Dog-- opposes a second stimulus "until we have given the first package a chance to work.” Voters know where he stands. No one knows where Bono-Mack stands and she's being defined-- very badly-- by the radical right, by moderates and by Democrats.

Are Blue Dogs fiscal conservatives? I don't think so. They talk the talk but don't walk the walk. If they did, they'd support single payer health care and wouldn't have gutted the stimulus. But they can't support things that help the people because they're really social conservatives. Assholes.